What are you cooking/baking to keep your spirits uplifted all month long?

I made sugar cookies last night, employing these huge dinosaur cookie cutters I bought on a whim at Williams Sonoma a while ago. The problem with big cookie cutters is that they make big cookies, which are hard to transfer from the cookie sheet to the cooling rack. There were many cookie casualties. T-Rex, for some reason, was especially vulnerable.

I used Alton Brown's recipe from the Food Network website, which is a pretty basic sugar cookie recipe (butter, sugar, flour, nothing fancy) and they taste just fine, if you don't mind your brontosaurus cookies not having tails.

~Erin
New York City Municipal Liaison
blog | twitter

I make a killer snickerdoodle. Can't take credit for the recipe, I got it from recipezaar: http://www.recipezaar.com/Soft-Snickerdoodle-Cookies-97496

And for the kickoff tonight, I'm making PHALANGES: http://vastamount.blogspot.com/2005/10/mmmmphalanges.html

During the month there will definitely be caramel brownies and other brownies of varying types (I like to experiment on my NaNo peeps) and there's bound to be a caramel apple cake and a chocolate cake for the TGIO.

Livvy, but you can call me Weebles

Manhattan co-ML
NaNoWrimo Haiku: 30 days of noveling, 17 syllables at a time

Baking? Cooking?

I have the middle eastern resturant on speed dial, all I have to do is hop the bus and go get it.....There's a fruit stand right next door, so I can grab stuff, pile it and me back on the bus. They're not open on Sunday, so that's the day to order from the Thai restaurant, or the Sushi joint... I will eat that's for sure. If I find a Greek diner that delivers between now until next week, I won't have to worry about a thing.

Two thumbs up to you baking babes!

edit: There's going to be a Thanksgiving potluck thing at work. I think if I feel up to it, I will make sweet potato/pineapple pies. (The place I work for has this ridiculous habit of doing this pot luck thing, that's why everyone can't get their pants closed LOL) I use the pineapple instead of sugar and it gives it a wonderful flavor. But that's if I'm not swamped with pages of my novel unfinished....and I feel like dragging them on 3 buses to get to work.....

I'm about to try my hand at toffee almond short bread. Except no place around here sells toffee bits, so it's going to be chocolate toffee almond short bread, because all i could find was chocolate-covered toffees to chop up.

Anyway, if it's any good, i'll plagiarize the recipe and post it here.

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

oohh, caramel brownies!! caramel apple cake!!! can you send me some? JK, but still...yum. Chocolate chip cookies are my go-to for baking, simple yet classic. I want to try an apple pie from scratch, but I think the time spent attempting that would be better spent writing.

I actually made a most excellent apple pie with cheddar cheese crust for Thanksgiving last year. Pie crust is a little tricky (my main tip is to handle the dough as little as possible) but baking a pie is not too bad. You can type while it's baking.

~Erin
New York City Municipal Liaison
blog | twitter

Epicurious has a recipe called something like 'quick and easy pie crust'. I've tried it once, and it was indeed quick and easy (assuming you have a food processor).

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

Ooh, you shouldn't have told me that ... that sounds delicious, and now I'm going to be thinking about it all day :) maybe there should be a Nano cookbook -- "Quick and Delicious Recipes to Keep You Writing"!

My older son loves to bake, so we've been making banana bread and peach cobbler and apple pie the last few days. The peach cobbler has a cinnamon roll component, so that's the part I do.

While it bakes is a good excuse to sit in the kitchen and not the living room with the kids, so I read or write there a lot. I plan on doing a lot of cooking during the month to sneak those extra few minutes of writing. (We have a laptop specifically in the kitchen)

Livvy, oh how I've missed your brownies!!!

Lara
i eat (and blog) / i tweet / take pix / occasionally tumbl

Come to the Tuesday night write in on the 3rd!

Livvy, but you can call me Weebles

Manhattan co-ML
NaNoWrimo Haiku: 30 days of noveling, 17 syllables at a time

Will try to :) Can't see location from my iPhone - won't scroll down. Assuming it's a reachable location (and am guessing it will be) I'm so there!

Lara
i eat (and blog) / i tweet / take pix / occasionally tumbl

pumpkin pie. duh. =)

I purchased Shrimp for spring rolls, something light and quick to fix! :)

Orangetunawriter

recipe, please!

i am currently making chili and tomorrow i'm going to make a stew. then i won't need to cook again until next weekend at the earliest. except for breakfast. i should have purchased poptarts.

cornbread

"drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open
today is where your book begins
the rest is still unwritten"
-"unwritten" by natasha bedingfield

write hard!

Poptarts! So fun, I haven't had them in years. :) I found the recipe on chowhound.com. I will try to find it when I take another break. :)

Orangetunawriter

'cinnamon roll component', 'Cheddar Cheese Crust'...YUMUUUM!

Orangetunawriter

Vietnamese-Style Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce Recipe - Chowhound.com
http://www.chow.com/recipes/10641

I hope the link works, if not please let me know. :) I love reading the suggestions from others who've tried the recipes.

Orangetunawriter

I have just recently gotten into cooking and I've been working on numerous soup recipes. November is the perfect soup month, and I love making a big batch and saving some for leftovers.

My favorite so far, and one I plan on making at least once during NaNo, is sweet potato-chickpea stew. Incredibly simple to make. Just veggie stock (I'm a vegetarian but it can really be any stock), sweet potatoes, chickpeas, and chunky beefsteak tomatoes. The flavors all just taste great together, it's really hearty and home-y.

NaNoWriMo 2006: Untitled - 59,280 - WINNER!
NaNoWriMo 2007 & 2008 - massive failures, but not this year.

http://www.twitter.com/cindiepal
http://thesubwaydiaries.wordpress.com

Dollface - here is one of my favorite soup recipes, and it can be made vegetarian (I make it vegetarian all the time and it tastes wonderful)

Turkish Lentil Bride's Soup

4 Tablespoons butter or 1 to 1 1/2 TBSP. olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
1 teaspoon paprika (I use Penzey's Hungarian Half-Sharp)
1 cup red lentils, washed and picked over
1/2 cup fine bulgur wheat
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
8 cups vegetable or beef stock
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes
1 Tablespoon dried mint leaves, crumbled (I've used a small handful of fresh mint, chopped)
Garnish: lemon slices and a few mint leaves

Heat the butter/oil in a large saucepan and saute the onions over low heat until they are golden--about 15 minutes. Stir in the paprika, then the lentils and bulgur to coat them in the butter. Add the tomato paste, stock, and hot pepper, bring to a boil, and cook until soft and creamy--about an hour.

When ready to serve, crumble the mint between your palms into the soup. Stir and remove the soup from the heat. Let rest for 10 minutes, then ladle into bowls, serving each with a lemon wedge and a sprinkling of mint leaves (if available) or crushed dried mint.

You can also add some chopped carrots, cook them with the onions.

Livvy, but you can call me Weebles

Manhattan co-ML
NaNoWrimo Haiku: 30 days of noveling, 17 syllables at a time

Just tried "Roasted Squid" from a local Asian Store, interesting, chewy... :)

Orangetunawriter

Just boiled a ton of shrimp so that I could have that this weekend, and fix it in different recipes, can't wait, Yum!

Orangetunawriter

But just imagine the poor woman who had to marry the lentil.

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

LOL! That soup does sound really good though.

I've caved in and purchased several store bought 'soups in a bowl'. They are the asian variety; spicy chicken, Kimchi(sp), ect... perfect for a late night quick fix to warm you up, and totally portable, gotta luv that part. :) Think Kung Fu Panda.

Orangetunawriter

Tonight before the Park Slope write-in, it's a sweet potato chilli I made up after viewing several sweet potato stew slow cooker recipes. It's sweet potatoes, onion n garlic, dry black beans, spicy turkey sausage, a little marinara (I'm out of plain tomato sauce, dang), chicken stock, and a bunch of spices thrown in willy-nilly. Gosh I love my slow cooker!

and yet again, there is this communication misfire! In Turkey, there is such a shortage of young women that it is often a rite of passage to make young men marry figures fashioned out of lentils, pasted together with tomato paste. This has the advantage of both getting the young man out of the house where he does nothing but sit around playing xbox all day and asking his mother to wash his socks, and providing him with the ingredients for soup for many months.

Livvy, but you can call me Weebles

Manhattan co-ML
NaNoWrimo Haiku: 30 days of noveling, 17 syllables at a time

At least it's not 'Turkish Lentil Bride Soup', though i guess then we'd know why there was such a shortage of young women...

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

It's the fun thought that counts, right? :) LOL! Wonder if there is a Turkish Lentil Bride's Soup Happy Meal. :)

Orangetunawriter